Get ready to pay $7 for a bottle of beer and $9 for a cup of soup. And don't even think about buying your lunchtime sandwich for less than $10.

These are the predictions of restaurant and bar owners who say they'll have no choice but to pass on their increased costs to customers if voters approve a November ballot measure to gradually raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

The Board of Supervisors last week put that measure on the ballot and approved separate legislation to close a loophole in the city's universal health care law that has let employers reclaim money set aside for their employees' health care if the funds went unspent. Eventually, employers won't be able to reclaim any of that money, and city officials hope they'll use the funds to provide regular health insurance instead.

For city officials, the twin victories were reason to raise a glass in celebration of workers' rights. But to restaurant and bar owners, the moves were cause for drowning their sorrows in what may be some of their last $4 bottles of beer.

"It really feels like the city is coming after us," said Ben Bleiman, owner of Bullitt, Tonic, Wild Hare and other bars in the city. "It doesn't seem fair to me that we are being asked to bear this burden."

Word of an increased minimum wage and closed loophole in health care has been percolating at City Hall for months, sparking anger among Bleiman's fellow bar owners. So they formed the aptly named San Francisco Bar Owners Alliance, which now has 110 members and, presumably, some of the coolest meetings around.

The alliance and the Golden Gate Restaurant Association wanted a tip credit to be part of the minimum wage compromise among labor representatives, business groups and city officials - but they were stiffed.

That means, Bleiman said, that waiters and bartenders who are tipped and make the city's minimum wage can earn $30-$40 an hour - and will see their wages go even higher with the higher minimum wage. The current minimum wage in San Francisco is $10.74, and if voters pass the ballot measure in November, it will rise gradually to hit $15 in 2018.

'A fairness issue'

Meanwhile, his kitchen workers already earn $15 an hour, aren't tipped and won't be entitled to another penny. Having to pay the front-of-the-house staff more means he'll never be able to give his back-of-the-house staff raises, he said.

"It's a fairness issue," he said, adding that the front-of-the-house workers who will get a raise are usually young, while the workers who won't get a raise tend to be older and have children.

California is one of a handful of states that doesn't allow tip credits, but San Francisco legally could have crafted a minimum-wage proposal in which tipped employees would receive just the state's lower minimum wage plus tips.

But Mayor Ed Lee, who brokered the minimum-wage compromise, said a tip credit was never on the table. Supporters wanted to focus on raising the base salaries of workers - and wanted to keep things simple.

"There would be a lot of people who would have a hard time dealing with it because of the way restaurants calculate tips - whether it's shared or nor shared, who gets it and who doesn't," Lee said. "It would have been a very complicated issue to have to deal with."

Adding surcharges

Tip credit aside, restaurant and bar owners say the minimum wage and closure of the health-care loophole will mean their already small profit margins of 3 to 5 percent will shrink into negative territory after a string of progressive laws from City Hall, including mandatory sick leave, mandatory health care and more.

These on top of the city's skyrocketing costs of renting commercial space and the heightened cost of many food items because of the drought could spell doom for restaurant owners, said Gwyneth Borden, executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association.

Expect to see higher prices, fewer staffers in favor of touch-screen devices to order and pay, and increased surcharges on diners' bills to comply with the city mandates. Many restaurants already tack on those surcharges - often around 4 percent, but Borden said she's seen them as high as 15 percent. That, or even higher, could become the norm, she said.

"You'll see more and more migration to Oakland and the South Bay and the Peninsula, where costs are cheaper and labor's cheaper," she predicted, adding that it's the mom-and-pop-type places that will close or move, while the most expensive restaurants will probably do all right.

Supervisor David Campos, who spearheaded the health care loophole legislation and backed the minimum-wage increase, said they're both "very modest proposals" that will gradually take effect - and that the perspective of business owners was taken into account in both.

'Not very believable'

Campos said the Golden Gate Restaurant Association has been "saying the sky is falling for years," but that in food-loving San Francisco, restaurants are proliferating and doing well in spite of some city regulations to help their workers.

"They gave it their best shot at the board, and not a single supervisor agreed with them," Campos said of the restaurant association. "They have cried wolf before, and they're not very believable."

In other words, take their predictions with a big grain of salt - hopefully lining the rim of a fairly priced margarita.